In response to a lowered demand for cement, employees of GCC Rio Grande Portland Cement in Tijeras are spending a little time off work.

The plant routinely shuts down for maintenance for about two weeks every year, according to plant manager David Saegart. The time is needed for maintenance on the huge iron kilns used at the plant to bake and mix the limestone, silica, iron oxide and other minerals in concrete. The plant employs about 100 people, he said. Instead of sending most of those employees home for just two weeks for the required maintenance, this year employees will be gone for about a month.

"This is a very difficult time for the company and for employees," he said. "We're trying to get our employees back to work as soon as possible."

The plant typically produces about 500,000 tons of cement each year, but that number will vary according to demand for the product. So far this year, the demand has been lower, so the company plans to concentrate its efforts on shipping the excess product out, which it will concentrate on while the employees are off work, he said. After that, the plant will begin producing cement as usual.

"Everything is contingent on the market," Saegart said. "It's affected by the recession. … As that improves, our shipment level will get back to more normal levels."

It's not just the plant in Tijeras that's feeling the effects of the recession. Construction in New Mexico is down by 16 percent, according to Toni Balzano, a public information officer for the New Mexico Economic Development Department. She said that commercial construction in Albuquerque is keeping pace, while residential construction took a hit.

"We've had a ding, but we've fared much better than the rest of the country," she said.

Construction is lagging in other Southwestern states and across the country, she said. Arizona's construction is down 27 percent, and Colorado's by 18 percent. But an industry slowdown in neighboring states will affect construction companies in New Mexico, many of which operate regionally or nationally.

"What we've seen in New Mexico is this trickle-down," Balzano said. "It's a national and global recession, so we're bound to see some downturn."

National and international factors may not have as much of an impact on GCC Rio Grande as they would on other construction companies, however, according to Saegart, because the cement his plant supplies is typically only for construction projects in New Mexico.

State stimulus money may be on its way and provide a little help. Saegart said he has heard of projects that may boost business, but so far GCC Rio Grande has not seen an increase in demand for its product as a result of stimulus money.

According to recent reports, less than 10 percent of an estimated $3 billion in stimulus money in New Mexico is slated to be used for highway construction and 12 percent will be spent repairing dams, building water treatment systems and other capital projects.

"Those could all result in, basically, the use of concrete," he said. "We haven't seen that as yet."

Saegart said the worst of the recession may be over for his company, but he wouldn't make any predictions.

"I don't have any ability to look into the future and know what's going to happen with the economy," he said. "We hope to have the plant restart as soon as possible and run at normal levels for as long as possible."

The plant has been in operation since 1959, but in 1994 it became part of the Mexican conglomerate Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua and took the name GCC Rio Grande Portland Cement Inc. The plant has a limestone mining operation on 2,100 acres in the hills south of Old Route 66 and west of N.M. 337 and won an Excellence in Reclamation award in 2006 from the Mining and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department for an effort to rehabilitate a 30-acre area where mining has finished.